Like brothers and sisters at a family reunion, coworkers tend to fall into intragroup behavior patterns, melding into a smoothly functioning yet uncreative team.
I used to witness a strange metamorphosis every year in the early fall. The tall, granite-faced men I knew as my uncles and the tall, granite-faced women I knew as my aunts would lose their adult identities and become, once again, a community of siblings. The executive, the bookkeeper, the nurse, and so on would arrive at
each annual reunion in western Massachusetts and become instead the eldest, the second-born, the third-born, all the way down to the baby, readopting the well-worn patterns of interaction that had seen them through their mother's death and a lot of other tough times in their Cambridge triple-decker. For me it was both
eerie and fascinating, and it gave me a lifelong appreciation for the power of sibling behavioral patterns. Our place in the birth order seems to affect so many things-the jobs we do, for example. Talk to your colleagues, the ones who perform the same work, and see if they didn't come from approximately the same place in
the birth order as you. It's uncanny. But it doesn't take an entire childhood for a group's dynamics to get locked in. It can happen quickly...
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The secret to motivating your team The Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder illuminates higher goals.
If pay isn't the key to encouraging great performance and attracting and keeping great people, what is?
A half-century ago, social scientist Abraham Maslow outlined a pyramid that showed what he called the human being's "hierarchy of needs." People start with a desire for basic physiological needs: food, clothing, shelter - that's the bottom of the pyramid. Once they've achieved those, they seek safety, and then social
interaction and love, and then self-esteem. Finally, at the top of the pyramid, is what Maslow called "self actualization" - the need to fulfill one's self, and become all that one is capable of being. Today, most workers - and particularly the best workers - have made their way to the top of Maslow's pyramid. Basic needs are
taken care of. They want something more. "Making a living is no longer enough," writes Drucker. "Work also has to make a life." If you want to keep good people, work needs to provide them with...
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Compensation conversations Communication about the value of compensation is key, on all levels, and in many ways.
Most talent managers know that effective rewards communication helps motivate employees, build commitment and drive business performance.
But that understanding doesn't always translate into action, and discontent and turnover are often the results. Imagine the following scenario: A hard-working professional in the consulting industry laments, "I have not had a pay raise in seven of the nine years I have worked for my firm." When pressed on how she
could make ends meet with the rising costs of groceries, utilities, fuel and general living, she said, "Well, I do get a performance bonus tacked on to my final paycheck each year. And my employer still pays the majority of health care premiums. But still, don't I deserve a raise?" This conversation is all too common,...
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As the economy rebounds, you may be looking closely at ex-employees who departed on good terms.
Rehiring can slash your job-search time and reduce (or eliminate) training and onboarding costs. About 40% of employers expect to rehire workers this year, according to a survey by consulting firm OI...
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In this tight employment market, just doing your job isn't enough. (Workplace superstars have always known that.)
It's also a myth that good work makes a good career. So, what does make a good career? Good office politics. Here are four ways that career columnist Penelope Trunk recommends that you use office politics in building your career:...
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Anything less than a completely honest performance appraisal will only cheat the employee out of personal development, plus it could set the stage for a discrimination lawsuit.
Here are eight important do's and don'ts: 1. DON'T fall prey to 'halo effect'...
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With competition hot for open positions, the pressure is on for job seekers to have flawless interview skills. Sometimes that pressure can cause candidates to make unusual, and sometimes unfavorable, interview mistakes.
A new CareerBuilder survey of more than 2,700 hiring managers reveals the outrageous and common mistakes some candidates make during job interviews. When asked for the most unusual blunders they'd encountered while interviewing candidates, hiring managers reported candidates who did the following:...
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Managing Motivation The recession has caused a widespread loss of employee engagement that can cripple your company. Learn how to motivate through it.
Four years ago, we launched a study of sixty extraordinary groups. We were curious about what makes some groups fantastic while most are ordinary. Or worse. Our study led us to a number of conclusions and a book. We will share some of what we learned here.
We focused on extraordinary groups of two to twenty people and what makes them so wonderful. We interviewed members of great groups, figuring why not learn from people who have lived through an extraordinary group experience. Four years later, we reached conclusions based on hearing stories from one to two members in each of
sixty groups. We learned about what motivates them to participate, how they feel about that, and what they actually did. This article describes eight performance patterns common to great groups. The more of these eight patterns are present, the more likely the group is to deliver amazing results...
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Have your meetings run more rocky than smooth lately? One expert on the subject says there are an array of mishaps to beware of before your next corporate gathering.
"Events/meetings are, for most companies, a hidden asset they rarely take full advantage of," says Joe Calloway, Chuck Feltz, and Kris Young, authors of the new book, "Never By Chance: Aligning People and Strategy Through Intentional Leadership." Meetings usually are a waste of time, they say. Before designing an
effective strategy, the authors say business leaders need to know the top ten meeting mistakes; focus their objectives, and then execute a meeting plan. Here are the 10 top meeting mistakes, according to "Never by Chance:"...
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Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills.
Questions to be Answered:
How is negotiation evolving?
How important are opening talks in determining a negotiation's outcome?
Can you win against a non-negotiable partner?
How can women negotiate past gender stereotypes?...
How to stop bad manners from ruining your relationships at work.
A manager can't figure out how to tell her colleague to stop staring at her chest when they talk. An employee is afraid to ask her supervisor not to yell at her in meetings. A boss can't figure out how to let his assistant know that he gets complaints from clients about her attitude. Situations like these plague workers and
managers everywhere. They are what drove Donna Flagg, a human resources consultant, to write her new book, Surviving Dreaded Conversations: Talk Through Any Difficult Situation at Work. Flagg's main message:...
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Forecasting has advanced significantly in recent years. But managers need to understand what they can and cannot predict and develop plans that are sensitive to surprises.
Why did no one see the subprime mortgage crisis coming? Because forecasting doesn't work nearly as well as we'd like to believe. Statistical modeling helps extrapolate patterns from past data, but it doesn't predict nearly as well. What are businesses to do, then, in the face of uncertainty? They must aim to be better
prepared for disasters...
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Invent your next job Show your value to a company by demonstrating to the right contacts how you can increase their profits.
No one's hiring you? Figure out something they'll absolutely need you for.
You've had years of experience in your field, yet you find yourself looking for work because of the bad economy. You know what companies you'd like to work for, but after constantly checking their Web sites for new job postings, you begin to realize there just aren't many opportunities for someone with your skills and experience.
You've considered a career change, but you don't want to start at the bottom at a lower salary after building a very successful career. It's time to consider an alternative. Create your own job...
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How companies like Gentle Giant use odd hiring practices to induct new recruits. Fourteen men and one woman are snaking up and down the steep tiers of Harvard Stadium. They started in a tight pack but have spread out, the natural athletes bounding ahead, the rest trotting resolutely behind. Their boss, Larry O'Toole, jogs along toward the rear, his back straight, his long legs scissoring. At 59,
O'Toole is almost three times the age of some of the runners. At the top of the final section, after racing up and down more than 1,000 steps, he rests, bent at the waist, his hands splayed across his knees. Around him, people are clapping. "All right, man!" someone cheers. "Nice, Larry. Nice." The stadium run is an initiation
rite at Gentle Giant, a $25 million moving company based in Somerville, Massachusetts. The practice began informally in the 1980s, when O'Toole hired members of college rowing teams, who liked to work out on the stadium stairs. In the early '90s, O'Toole institutionalized the run as a way to test the mettle of new hires
and emphasize that he expects them to push themselves. Most movers complete the trial within their first few weeks on the job. Office workers are encouraged to try as well, and about a quarter of them do. Afterward, they recharge with scrambled eggs and sausage while O'Toole delivers an orientation speech. "A lot
of people who come here have heard about the stadium, and it tells them this is the kind of place they're looking for,"...
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About 10 years ago I was having my annual holiday party, and my niece had come with her newly minted M.B.A. boyfriend. As he looked around the room, he noted that my employees seemed happy. I told him that I thought they were.
Then, figuring I would take his new degree for a test drive, I asked him how he thought I did that. "I'm sure you treat them well," he replied. "That's half of it," I said. "Do you know what the other half is?" He didn't have the answer, and neither have the many other people that I have told this story. So what is the answer?...
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Booking a flight the frugal way Booking a flight is no longer straightforward. Here are a few web sites that make it possible to be frugal.
It used to be so simple. You wanted to go to Paris, so you called a travel agency, gave them your dates and budget, and with any luck, you soon had in your hands a real paper ticket with a real dollar value.
Even in the early days of the Internet, it was easier. You went to one of the few booking sites - Travelocity or Expedia, most likely - searched for your route, paid with a credit card and that was it. Maybe you even got a paper ticket in the mail. Those were the days! Today, however, booking a flight is a total mess. Travelocity and
Expedia have been joined by Bing and Orbitz and Dohop and Vayama and CheapTickets and CheapOair and Kayak and SideStep and Mobissimo and and and . I could go on and list every single Web site out there, but I won't. There are just too many. Instead, I'll lead you through the steps I make when I'm booking a flight
myself. I've covered this territory a bit before - here and here - but today I'll try to go into more detail...
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